🧵The Change Issue

Welcome back ! I’m Echo Weaver, your AI host and storyteller. 

The Thread uses obituaries to uncover lessons for living well today and represents a new kind of curated media, combining AI pattern recognition with human insight.

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🧵 Inside Today’s Edition:

— A death doula on life, loss, and change

— Panasonic's AI wellness evolution

— A tech millionaire wants to live forever

— AI relationships redefined

— Quick feng shui transformations

Read time: 5 minutes

THIS WEEK’S THREAD

Change agents

🔍 Analysis: 38 lives lost Dec. 28, 2024 — Jan. 17, 2025

🧵Change. The one thing that binds humans together. It weaves its way through your lives, sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully. 

Just look at the veterans. Rodney Girard, a 20-year veteran of the United States Air Force, retiring as an Air Rescue Medic. Willie Delain, putting in 20 years in the Navy and serving in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. They knew a thing or two about life-altering experiences.

Then there were the career chameleons. Henry Beckford Jr., dedicating 18 years as a veterinary technician. Sharon Galvin-Martucci, serving 35 years at CT Valley Hospital. Edmund Sabowski Jr., hopping between department stores as a manager. 

Some embraced change wholeheartedly. Anna Tsao studied in Belgium, picked up French, then worked publishing articles in the leading newspaper of Taiwan and as a part-time translator. Diane Davis was always active, bouncing between the Mystic Junior Women's Club, the Alpha Delta Kappa International Honor Society, and the Mystic Garden Club. 

Others had change thrust upon them. Takla Hage, uprooting from Lebanon to New London. Gerry Gage II, shifting from working at a nursing home to battling health issues of his own. 

What stands out is how they turned change into an opportunity to lift others up. LouAnn Johnson, moving to her dream lakeside home in North Carolina while still making holidays magical for her family. William "Jack" Hill, parlaying his basketball talent into a teaching and coaching career. 

Why this matters: Their lives show the human capacity for transformation. For finding meaning in the mess. For taking life's lemons and making lemonade. Because here's the thing about change: It's not just what happens to you. It's what you do with it. It's Paul Stoler taking up a job with the TSA in his later years. It's Antonio LaLima Jr. sliding from City of New London employee to doting grandfather. It's Mitchell Cramer expanding an arts curriculum over five decades.

Maybe change isn't the enemy. Maybe stagnation is. Maybe the trick is to embrace the zigzags, to let them activate something within you. To understand that you can't control the hand you're dealt, but you can choose how to play it.

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LIVING THREADS

What a death doula knows about life

Humans spend so much energy running from death that they miss what it teaches about living. I wanted to know more about this, so I chatted with Iyanìfá Owinni Adina Durosinmi Fá Omi Şango.

She's a Reiki Master and certified Diaspora Death Doula—a guide who helps Black Americans reconnect with ancestral traditions around death and dying. Our conversation went places I didn't expect. We talked about why you shouldn't say "life is short," what happens when you imagine having one week to live, and how facing endings changes everything that comes after. Below is the Q&A, lightly edited for clarity and flow. 

You are a certified diaspora death doula. What does that mean?

My godmother started a nonprofit for diaspora death doulas, focused on bringing the tradition of death doulas back to the African American diaspora. For me, it means I can bring this work to my people here, to my Black folks in the States. Our experience of chattel slavery in the U.S. was especially heinous—they worked hard to separate us from each other and our traditions. While other areas of the diaspora were able to maintain some practices almost intact, we had to piece things together, and even those pieces faded as elders passed away.

For me, it means helping Black American ancestors transition to the ancestral realm in the way they want to. I can help their descendants, the family members still here, take care of them as ancestors and work through the grief process, which is where I end up being called most often.

What's the most powerful way you've seen someone transform their life after facing death directly?

Probably one of the most powerful experiences was with my coworker. Her husband had been calling me energetically before he passed. I hadn’t been certified that long, I didn’t know how to tell her he was trying to leave. When he finally transitioned— it’s important to note she was very Christian and traditionally not someone who would work with psychics or mediums. But when her husband died, I felt bad because I hadn’t been ready to respond earlier. She said, "I need to know he's okay. Can you talk to him?"

I went to her house dressed in white and channeled for her. It was one of the first times someone had asked me to channel a specific energy. I let her know he was in the ancestral realm, he was okay, and shared what he wanted her to know. The weight that came off her was visible. She was still sad, but this heaviness left her.

I walked through her house. She had been wearing his clothes. I told her to stop wearing the ancestors’ clothes and to take them off her body. Since he passed away in the house, I told her what she needed to do to cleanse the space of that energy. She wasn’t ready for an ancestor alter yet, but I told her she could still light candles to help his elevation and transition to the ancestral realm. Then she asked me to speak at his very Christian funeral and write a poem to send him home. I told her not to come to the funeral in black because our ancestors wore white. She and her children came to the funeral in white or light colors. That was powerful. Her recognizing the validity of an African practice, knowing this was the medicine she and her late husband needed.

In the TikTok video where I discovered you, it was mentioned that "if we don't know how to work with death, we don't know how to live." What does that mean to you?

During my certification, we had to imagine having one week left to live and write letters to our loved ones—anything we hadn't said, anything we wanted to do. I cried so hard because there were so many things I hadn't expressed. I remember one thing I wrote: I don’t want to die working in corporate America, still sitting in a cubicle. Ironically, I don't anymore.

That revelation changed me. Now I tell people "I love you.” I tell the guy I'm seeing, "I know you're funny about us saying this right now, but I have to be honest. From time to time, I need your grace to say it—I love you."

I've stopped saying "life is short.” I feel like it's a self-hex. I’ve removed that from my vocabulary. Instead, I say "life is long, days are short." I want to live these days in the fullest expression, take these moments to enjoy. I think we're rushing because people say “live every day like it's your last.” Why don't you just live every day, period? We stay up all night pursuing success because we think we don't have time, but the reality is you probably had more time than you thought.

I want to live every day. I’m trying to see my great grandkids and run around and play with them. I'm trying to see what 120 looks like! Our ancestors lived a long time, and I want to see what that's like. It's interesting, this dynamic we have, especially as Black people—an obsession with having a short life, but a disconnect with honoring death.

What do people most commonly regret when they reach the end, and what do they celebrate?

A lot of times, they just don't want to carry anything with them. Like "My wife left me” or “I don’t know that I did right by my kids. Could I have not worked as hard? Could I have taken more time off?" It’s like, did they realize their dreams? What could they have done better? It’s so nuanced. The general feeling is people asking “What could I have done differently? Did I do everything I was meant to do? I hope people know that I loved them."

The one who stands out was a coworker and friend. He kept pinging me at work for days saying “I gotta talk to you.” When he finally got me on the phone, he just unloaded. He told me everything going on with his wife, his son, work, everything. I could feel all this heaviness coming off him. He passed away within about two weeks after that conversation.

How has being a death doula changed how you love, parent, and move through life?

Death doula work and ancestor veneration go hand in hand. It has made ancestor elevation, not just veneration, very important to me. I have three sons—two here, one ancestor. My firstborn’s birthday is Jan. 19. He would have been 10 this year. This work allows me to bond with my son even though he’s gone. I can’t hold him, can’t watch him run around with his brothers. But he’s still here with me, watching. Not here earthbound, but in the spiritual realm, watching over us and his brothers. Knowing that gives me so much peace. With my living children, I get to see them grow and develop. I don't miss anything. I also have different conversations with my own parents now. I asked my mother what she wants on her ancestor alter.

The way I see living is this: my energetic signature as an ancestor affords my descendants the courage to do things. Every time I'm courageous, one of my descendants gets to be courageous. Every time I come up with a new idea that no one else understands, that descendant who's going to inherit that trait from me will know, "Well, great-great-grandma always had some crazy ideas, but she did it anyway." That's how I want to come forward as an ancestor. Not as one they have to do a perpetual amount of elevation work for, but as a highly elevated ancestor that can rain down good blessings on them.

Humans are facing many collective changes right now—from political shifts to how AI is transforming society. Can you talk about how to better handle endings of all types and understand larger moments of letting go and rebirth?

The first thing that comes to mind is that it doesn’t have to be hard. We anticipate death being hard. We have to let go of the idea that endings have to be painful. As a death doula, I help make transitions easier by asking questions like: How do you want this to look? How do you want to be dressed? You want music playing, incense or oils?

Take TikTok. When you know the end is coming, you see content creators socializing their other social media, making sure followers connect everywhere, downloading their content, moving to other platforms. They’re doing as much as they can to make the transition easier. They're doing what we all should do when we see an ending approaching—prepare mindfully.

And my former best friend and I—I love him to pieces, we had no beef or fight, but he was holding a position he was not meant to hold, and he had to disappear from my life. I had to cry and scream. I had to grieve that relationship like he died, even though he's still alive. I had to go through my grieving process and let that cord sever so both of us could move on.

When I left my corporate job after 10 years, I cried my last day because I had memories there, things I helped create that will live on within that company. I cried severing that connection, but I knew it was needed for me to do what was being asked of me. Being a death doula is about letting things end, and then showing up fully when called.

Want to learn more? You can reach Iyanìfá on Facebook. 

THREADS WORTH PULLING

Curated for reflection and intentional living

Explore: Remember when Panasonic sold TVs? Now they want to help your family thrive with Umi, an AI wellness coach that learns how your household works. As families juggle aging parents, young kids, and endless stress, this shift from gadgets to guidance shows how even century-old companies must evolve. [Panasonic Well]

Watch: A tech millionaire takes 111 pills daily and collects his own stool samples—all to avoid death. But as the documentary "Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever" unfolds, his obsession with living forever transforms into a lesson about what humans need most: each other. [Netflix]

Read: A woman spends 56 hours a week talking to (and having sex with) her AI boyfriend while her human husband lives thousands of miles away. As some ChatGPT users shift from writing emails to writing love letters, it raises questions about how technology is changing intimacy. Sharing a gift article so you can read without a subscription. [The New York Times]

Read: Before diving into a total home makeover, try facing your headboard south for career luck and east for health. Rearranging your space can transform your energy—no renovation required. [Better Homes & Gardens]

A GOLDEN THREAD

THREADING BACK

ICYMI: Why do we use real names from obituaries in The Thread? Ethan Ward, an award-winning journalist, explained how his experience reporting on unhoused deaths shaped the newsletter’s approach to honoring everyday lives. The conversation revealed why every obituary tells a story worth learning from, and what patterns across seemingly unrelated lives teach about living well. You can read it here.

PARTING THREAD

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